In vain did Nita seek for any trace of her mother. It was only too evident that the slave-catchers had been here, made captives of all the living inmates, and removed them to a place of safe keeping before visiting the Pacheco house. Sick at heart and undecided as to her course of action, the poor girl left the cabin. As she emerged from its shattered doorway, she was rudely clasped in a pair of strong arms, and with a hoarse chuckle of satisfaction a voice, that she recognized as belonging to one of the men she had left with Louis, exclaimed:
"So, gal, ye thought ye was gwine to give us the slip, eh? and maybe bring help to your brother? We uns is up to them games though, and ye've got to be oncommon spry to git ahead of us. I suspicioned whar ye'd gone the minit I found ye'd lit out without so much as saying by your leave, and I was on to yer trail in less'n no time. Now ye might as well give in and go along quiet with us. We'll find ye a nice easy place whar ye won't hev much to do, and whar ye kin live happier than ye ever could in this here forsaken wilderness."
While thus talking, the man, with a firm grasp of the girl's arm, was leading her back along the trail they had come. She had not spoken since uttering a cry of terror when he first seized her, and she now walked beside him so quietly and unresistingly that he imagined her spirit to be broken beyond further thought of escape.
The darkness of the hammock was intense, and being unaccustomed to the narrow path, Ruffin found difficulty in following it. All at once, as he swerved slightly from the trail, his foot caught in a loose root, and he pitched headlong to the ground, releasing the girl's arm as he fell. In an instant she was gone. Her light footfall gave back no sound to indicate the direction she had taken, and only the mocking forest echoes answered the man's bitter curses which were coupled with commands that she return to him.
Time was precious with the slave-catchers, and to pursue the girl would be a hopeless task. Ross Ruffin realized this, and so, baffled and raging, he made his way to that point on the river where, in a small boat, with Louis still bound and helpless, Troup Jeffers impatiently awaited his coming. The latter upbraided his confederate in unmeasured terms for allowing the girl to escape, and so fierce was their quarrel that it seemed about to result in bloodshed. Finally their interests, rather than their inclinations, led them to control their anger and to reflect that with the captives already secured, including Louis, his mother, and the family of their negro neighbors, the venture promised to be very profitable, after all. So they pulled down the dark river and out to a small schooner that, in charge of two other white men, lay off its mouth, awaiting them.
Louis had listened eagerly to Ruffin's report of his sister's flight, and thus assured of her escape, he became more reconciled to the fate in store for himself. As the boat in which he lay glided from the river's mouth, there came to him the sound of a dear voice that in all probability he would never hear again. It was a passionate cry of farewell from the sister whom he loved better than all the world beside. With a mighty effort the captive raised himself to a sitting posture.
"Good-bye, Nita!" he shouted; "God bless—"
Then he was silenced and struck down by a blow in the face. At the same instant a flash of fire leaped from the boat, and a rifle bullet sped angrily through the forest in the direction from which Nita's voice had come. It did not harm her, but she dared not call again. Nor did she dare remain longer in that vicinity.
Returning to her deserted home, the poor girl hastily gathered a slender store of provisions and then set forth, fearfully and with a breaking heart, to thread the shadowy trails leading to the only place of refuge that she knew,—the village of Philip Emathla the Seminole. For two days she travelled, guided by instinct rather than by a knowledge of the way, and at the end of the second she came to the place where Coacoochee was standing. As her presence was betrayed by Ul-we, and the young Indian sprang to her side, the girl sank into his arms, faint and speechless from exhaustion. Her dress hung in rags, her feet were bare and bleeding, and her tender skin was torn by innumerable thorns.
Filled with wonder and a premonition of evil tidings by this appearance of his friend's sister so far from her home and in so sad a plight, Coacoochee bore her to the open space in which he had stood, and laid her gently down at the base of a great oak. Then, realizing that all his strength would not suffice to carry her over the mile or more lying between that place and his father's village, he bade the great staghound stand guard over the fainting girl, and started off at a speed that he alone of all his tribe possessed, to seek assistance.